A New Year is the start of a new beginning and if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to find a new teaching job, we at Smile have some CV tips which are sure to help you score the teaching or teaching support role of your dreams.

Keep it simple

Sure, a bright green CV will make you stand out from the crowd but not necessarily in the right ways (we prefer orange). Keep away from hard to read fonts and jazzy layouts. For ease of use and system compatibility, we’d recommend using Word and a simple font like Arial or Calibri. 

And if you were wondering about adding a photo of yourself in, our advice would be don’t. We’re sure you look lovely but we’d rather you use the space to focus on your skills, achievements and experience. We will ask for a photo of you later in the registration stage, however, this is for identification purposes.

Start with the basics

There’s little point having a great CV if no one can reach you! Ensure that your name and contact details including address, telephone numbers and email are all present at the top of your CV. 

Lots of teachers and school leaders also have professional social media accounts (just like us - @smile_education - why not give us a follow?) so, if you do have one of these you may want to include that too. However, if your Twitter timeline focuses more on cute cats and Netflix series give this suggestion a miss! 

Organisation is key

Once you’ve added the important bits (contact details), it’s time to think about the layout of your CV. We’d suggest something like this:

• Opening statement - a short profile about yourself which details what you are looking for and your skills. 

• Experience - focus on your teaching experience here and be sure to start with your most recent role (which may be your current role)

• Qualifications - again start with your most recent first. What you start with will depend on the role you are applying for. For example, teachers will likely start with their PGCE and then go on to include their A-Level and GCSE results

• Training - in this section you can add in any additional courses you’ve done. This could include first aid, Team Teach or safer recruitment training (if you haven’t completed these don’t worry, we offer them to all of our candidates!)

• References - you can either choose to name your references and give their details or simply write ‘references on request’. The latter is the better option if your current employer doesn’t know you are looking to leave your role just yet! 

Keep it to two pages 

The trick to cutting your CV down to just two pages is to be concise. When a recruiter is looking at your CV, they are looking for three key bits of information:

• Your experience 

• Your qualifications 

• Your contact details

Turning your CV into War and Peace only makes that information more difficult to find and could lead to you missing out on your dream role. 

If you’ve had lots of teaching experience then try to summarise your earlier teaching roles to just a couple of sentences. This will you more space to talk about your role at present which is likely to be more relevant.

Check it and check it again

There is nothing worse than a typo in a CV or anywhere for that matter. Having most likely stared at the screen for hours, it is unlikely that you may spot any grammatical or spelling errors so, our advice would be to have someone you trust to take a look over it. You can also use Grammarly if you’d like a second opinion and don’t trust your friends… (we don’t judge).

And that’s it! That is our guide on how to create the perfect teaching CV. If you’d like any further support, please do feel free to get in touch and speak with one of our lovely consultants. 

However, if you’ve followed our tips, we have no doubt you’ve put together a top-notch CV, which means there is only one thing left to do: submit!